I'd been on this whole rabbithole exploration thing of those MIT PCC 8086
uploads that have been on the site & on bitsavers, it had me wondering is
there any version of PCC that targeted the 386?
While rebuilding all the 8086 port stuff, and MIT PC/IP was fun, it'd be
kind of interesting to see if anything that ancient could be forced to work
with a DOS Extender..
I know there was the Anders Magnusson one in 2007, although the site is now
offline. But surely there must have been another one between 1988/2007?
Thanks!
Not that I'm looking for drama but any idea what happened?
Such a shame it just evaporated.
____
| From: arnold(a)skeeve.com
| To: tuhs@tuhs.org;jsteve@superglobalmegacorp.com
| Cc:
| Sent: March 25, 2024 08:46 AM
| Subject: Re: [TUHS] 386 PCC
|
|
| Jason Stevens <jsteve(a)superglobalmegacorp.com> wrote:
|
| > I know there was the Anders Magnusson one in 2007,
| although the site is now
| > offline.
|
| A mirror of that work is available at
| https://github.com/arnoldrobbins/pcc-revived.
| It's current as of the last time the main site was
| still online,
| back in the fall of 2023.
|
| Magnusson has more than once said he's working to get
| things back
| online, but nothing has happened yet. I check weekly.
|
| FWIW,
|
| Arnold
|
Hi Everyone,
I’m cleaning the office and I have the following free books available first-come, first-served (just pay shipping).
“Solaris Internals.” Richard McDougall and Jim Mauro. 2007 Second Edition. 1020pp hardbound. (2 copies)
“Sun Performance and Tuning - Java and the Internet.“ Adrian Cockcroft and Richard Pettit. 1998 Second Edition. 587pp softbound.
“DTrace - Dynamic Tracing in Oracle Solaris, MacOSX, and FreeBSD.” Brendan Gregg and Jim Mauro. 2011. 1115 pp softbound. (2 copies)
“Oracle Database 11g Release 2 High Availability.” Scott Jesse, Bill Burton, & Bryan Vongray. 2011 Second Edition. 515pp softbound.
“Oracle Solaris 11 System Administration - The Complete Reference.” Michael Jang, Harry Foxwell, Christine Tran, & Alan Formy-Duval. 2013. 582pp softbound. (12 copies). NOTE, this is an older edition not the one covering 11.2.
“Strategies for Real-Time System Specification.” Derek Hatley & Imtiaz Pirbhai. 1988. 386pp hardbound.
“Mathematica.” Stephen Wolfram. 1991 Second Edition. 961pp hardbound. (Anyone want to save this from the landfill?)
Please send me mail off-list with your name and address and I’ll let you know shipping cost.
I expect to have additional books later this year.
Regards,
Stephen
> From: Rich Salz <rich.salz(a)gmail.com <mailto:rich.salz@gmail.com>>
>> Don't forget the Imagen's
>>
>
> What, no Dover "call key operator"? :) (It was a Xerox product based on
> their 9700 copier.)
Actually, it was based on a Xerox 7000:
"The Dover is strip-down [sic] Xerox 7000 Reduction Duplicator. All optical system, electronics, contact relays, top harness, control console and related components are eliminated from the Xerox 7000. The paper feeder, paper transports, engines, solenoid, paper path sensing switches and related components are not disturbed. …"
http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/xerox/dover/dover.pdf
Evenin' all...
I have a vague recollection that /dev/tty8 was the console in Edition 5
(we only used it briefly until Ed 6 appeared), but cannot find a reference
to it; lots of stuff about Penguin/OS though...
Something to do with 0-7 being the mux, so "8" was left (remember that
/dev/tty and /dev/console didn't exist back then), mayhaps?
Thanks.
-- Dave
> There was lawyerly concern about the code being stolen.
Not always misplaced. There was a guy in Boston who sold Unix look-alike
programs. A quick look at the binary revealed perfect correlation with our
C source. Coincidentally, DEC had hired this person as a consultant in
connection with cross-licensing negotiations with AT&T. Socializing at
the end of a day's negotiations, our lawyer somehow managed to turn the
conversation to software piracy. He discussed a case he was working on,
and happened to have some documents about it in his briefcase. He pulled
out a page disassembled binary and a page of source code and showed them to
the consultant.
After a little study, the consultant confidently opined that the binary was
obviously compiled from that source. "Would it surprise you," the lawyer
asked, "if I told you that this is yours and that is ours?" The consultant
did not attend the following day's meeting.
Doug
In another thread there's been some discussion of Coherent. I just came
across this very detailed history, just posted last month. There's much
more to it than I knew.
https://www.abortretry.fail/p/the-mark-williams-company
Marc
VP/ix ran on both System III and UNIX System V/386 Release 3.2.
I do still have a copy of the VP/ix Environment documentation
and the diskettes for the software. I have the "Introduction to the
VP/ix Environment" for further reference for interested folks.
Also found some information about VP/ix on these web pages:
1.
https://virtuallyfun.com/2020/11/29/fun-with-vp-ix-under-interactive-unix-s…
2.
https://techmonitor.ai/technology/interactive_systems_is_adding_to_vpix_wit…
3.
https://manualzz.com/doc/7267897/interactive-unix-system-v-386-r3.2-v4.1---…
It's been a long time since I looked at this.
Heinz
On 3/13/2024 8:53 AM, Clem Cole wrote:
> Thanks. Fair enough. You mentioned PC/IX as /ISC's System III/
>
> I'm not sure I ever ran ISC's System III port—only the V.3 port -
> which was the basis for their ATT, Intel, and IBM work and later sold
> directly. I'm fairly sure ISCalso called that port PC/IX, but they
> might have added something to say with 386 in the name—I've forgotten.
> [Heinz probably can clarify here]. Anyway, this is likely the source
> of my thinking. FWIW: The copy of PC/IX for the 386 (which I still
> have on a system I have not booted in ages) definitely has VPIX.
> ᐧ
>
> On Wed, Mar 13, 2024 at 11:28 AM Marc Rochkind <mrochkind(a)gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> @Clem Cole <mailto:clemc@ccc.com>,
>
> I don't remember what it was. But, the XT had an 8088, so
> certainly no 386 technology was involved.
>
> Marc
>
> On Wed, Mar 13, 2024 at 8:38 AM Clem Cole <clemc(a)ccc.com> wrote:
>
> @Marc
>
> On Tue, Mar 12, 2024 at 1:18 PM Marc Rochkind
> <mrochkind(a)gmail.com> wrote:
>
> At a trade show, I bought a utility that allowed me to run
> PC-DOS under PC/IX. I'm sure it wasn't a virtual machine.
> Rather, it just swapped back and forth. (Guessing a bit
> there.)
>
> Hmm ... you sure it was not either VPIX or DOS/Merge -- ISC
> built VPIX in cooperation with the Phoenix Tech folks for
> PC/IX. I always bought a copy with it, but it may have been an
> option. LCC did DOS/Merge originally as part of the AIX work
> for IBM and would become a core part of OS/2 Warp IIRC. Both
> Merge and VPIX had some rough edges but certainly worked fine
> for DOS 3.3 programs. The issue tended to be Win and DOS
> graphics-based programs/games that played fast and loose,
> bypassing the DOS OS interface and accessing the HW directly.
> For instance, I never got the flight simulator (Air War over
> Germany) for Dad's WWII plane (P-47 Thunderbolt) to run under
> either (i.e., only under DOS directly on the HW. FWIW: In that
> mode, Dad said the simulator flew a lot like how he remembered
> it).
>
> Both Merge and VPIX used the 386 VM support and a bunch of
> work in the core OS. Heinz would have to fill us in here.
> The version of the 386 port ISC delivered to AT&T and Intel
> only had the kernel changes to allow the VM support for VPIX
> to be linked in, but it was not there. IICR (and I'm not
> sure I am) is that Merge could run on PC/IX also, but you had
> to replace a couple of kernel modules. It certainly would
> work on the AT&T and Intel versions.
> ᐧ
>
>
>
> --
> /My new email address is mrochkind(a)gmail.com/
>
Did some reading today, curious on the current state of things with AT&T's UNIX copyright genealogy. The series of events as I understand it are:
AT&T partners with Novell for the Univel initiative.
Novell then acquires System V and USL from AT&T.
Novell sells UNIX System V's source to SCO, but as the courts have ruled, not the copyright.
Novell gets purchased by Microfocus.
Microfocus gets purchased by OpenText Corporation.
Does this make OpenText the current copyright holders of the commercial UNIX line from AT&T.
What got me looking a bit closer into this is curiosity regarding how the opening of Solaris and the CDDL may impact publication of UNIX code between System III and SVR4. I then felt the need to refresh on who might be the current copyright holder and this is where the trail has lead me.
My understanding too is that Sun's release under the CDDL set the precedent that other sub-licencees of System V codebases are also at liberty to relicense their codebases, but this may be reading too far into it. There's also the concern that the ghost of SCO will continue to punish anyone else who tries with costly-but-doomed-to-fail litigation. Have there been any happenings lately with regards to getting AT&T UNIX post-PDP-11 opened up more in the world? Reading up a bit on OpenText's business, they don't seem like they're invested in the OS world, seems that their primary sector is content management. Granted, there's certainly under-the-radar trading of bits and pieces, but it would be nice to have some more certainty about what can happen out in the open.
- Matt G.
Hi all,
I've been working quite a bit recently with SunOS 4 on a SPARCstation 5,
seeing what I can coax out of it in terms of building and supporting a
modern computing environment. I know that TUHS isn't really the right
place for this, but can someone point me to somewhere that is? I've made
significant progress in some areas and spent a lot of cycles to get there -
for instance, I have GCC 3.4.6 up and running - so I'd like to contribute
to a community if one exists. Is there a modern equivalent of sun-managers?
-Henry
